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Face Scan 

The new iPhone enables facial recognition to unlock personal data. In fact, facial recognition has been widely deployed in public surveillance, retail and now has come out of shadow into virtually every aspect of our daily life. I originally considered QR code scanning as the anchor for my social performance/experiment. After some thought and talk with digital media expert, it seems the commercial association with QR code is too strong, and the application isn’t widely accessible to people. Accessibility is essential in my project to invite participation. Instead of QR code, facial recognition seems an inevitable trend that is already happening. The controversy and risks of breaching our privacy and legal integrity present an opportunity for me to investigate its implication. 

  Conceptually, I would like to investigate how facial recognition has changed perception of our private and public identities, our relationships with our neighbors, community members, fellow citizens etc. namely the strangers who live around us. Are we getting accustomed to being recognizable and trackable and being more open about ourselves? Or is it a war on protecting privacy and our own values? Many more questions are still looming… till I find the right expression.

How the project work: Have a facial recognition app ready, invite participators to sign up and link with Facebook to collect personal data. Participators scan each others’ faces and are prompted to guess each others’ background, habits, personal characters and preferences. It sort of mimics Tinder in that it encourages reaching out to strangers and get to know them. But the purpose here is more to defy stereotypes and open creative ways for dialogue. Also Tinder works from your phone to meeting in person. SCAN ME works the reverse way. When prototype passes test, use it on street on random people. Ideas more to come.

New Stage 

1) Learn about facial recognition apps. What is the easiest way to do facial recognition on phones?  2) Set up some preliminary prompts for the project. 3) Learn how to use existing data on Facebook for this application. Start building the app. 

Research

Facial recognition: issues of privacy

Facebook face id

As promised we’re back with a new (long-ish) blog and sure you’ve got a hell of a lot of questions that hopefully we can answer today!

So, why does the world need bubble? 

What can bubble offer? 

What makes bubble stand out from the crowd? 

And more importantly how does bubble change the game?

First we’ll have to take a look at the major competition:

Trover

App Store Description: 

‘Trover is the app for travelers. Satisfy your wanderlust with a stunning collection of geo-tagged traveler photos. Create visual bucket lists of where you want to go. Post photos of your own discoveries and join our global community.’

What It Does:

Think of Trover as a traveller specific version of Instagram; users take photos, add their 2 cents, tag them with a location and share them with other travellers. This allows ‘Trovers’ to explore the world visually through pictures & comments uploaded by friends and then use this information to effectively plan their own trips. 

Foursquare

App Store Description:

Foursquare is your ultimate city guide, in your pocket. Find the best places to eat, drink, shop, or visit — in any city in the world. Access over 60 million short reviews from local experts. Traveling or looking to discover new places nearby?

• Tell Foursquare your favorite things and the app gets to know you. • Search for the best restaurants, coffee, nightlife, shops, and more. • Read short reviews and never miss out on the best thing to order or experience. • Save places you want to go, so you never forget.

What It Does:

Foursquare is google for exploring the world around you; it’s a personalised search engine that’s driven by its users and their reviews. We say personalised because Foursquare allows users to specify interests in order to personalise the search as well as pulling data from places they’ve visited and friends who the user trusts. It had a social element the app’s developers removed to create a separate companion app called Swarm.

HeyLets

App Store Description:

‘Experience more with HeyLets. Be inspired by a personalized feed of fun experiences and cool new places recommended by people that enjoy doing the same things you do.’

What It Does: 

HeyLets is similar to Foursquare in the sense that it’s an app that aims to personalise a process that lets you search for places to visit by cross-referencing with your friends & acquaintances who have overlapping interests. 

Gogobot

App Store Description: 

‘Gogobot is your go to place for places to go. With over 725,000 reviews and 4M photos, Gogobot provides you with personalized recommendations on where to Eat, Play or Stay wherever you are.’

What It Does:

Just like Foursquare & HeyLets Gogobot is another app that provides suggestions by having you state interests and cross-referencing with friends that have overlapping interests. The difference however is that Gogobot allows you to connect with friends to do things together. 

Couchsurfing:

App Store Description: 

‘You have friends all over the world, you just haven’t met them yet. Couchsurfing is a global community of over 9 million travel enthusiasts in 120,000 cities building meaningful connections across cultures.’

What It Does:

Couchsurfing, very much like its description states, is a community. It’s kind of like AirBnB only hosts don’t charge people to stay the night as they are more interested in connecting with travellers. Simply put? It’s a global community of travellers who are willing to put up fellow travellers and meet new people. 

Highlight

App Store Description: 

‘Who's nearby? Highlight is a fun, simple way to learn more about the people around you. If someone standing near you also has Highlight, their profile will show up on your phone. You can see their name, photos of them, mutual friends, and anything else they have chosen to share. When you meet someone, Highlight helps you see what you have in common with them. And when you forget their name at a party a week later, Highlight can help you remember it. As you go about your day, Highlight runs quietly in the background, surfacing information about the people around you. If your friends are nearby, it will notify you. If someone interesting crosses your path, it will tell you more about them. Highlight gives you a sixth sense about the world around you, showing you hidden connections and making your day more fun.’

What It Does:

Highlight is unique in what it does; it pulls your information from Facebook then uses your location to connect you with the people in your friends list outside the digital world. In addition to this the app also notifies you when there’s someone close to you that knows someone in your friend list ultimately allowing you to connect with friends of friends. 

Vamos

App Store Description:

‘Vamos gives you worldwide access to events by hooking you up with guest-lists, tickets and photos into one app from sources such as Facebook, Eventbrite, Stubhub, Eventim and Ticketmaster.’

What It Does:

Vamos scours the internet looking for events then lists them by cross-referencing your facebook interests with information about which events your friends are attending in order to help you find something to do.  

Gravy 

App Store Description:

‘Everyone is using Gravy to make plans for tonight, this weekend, or an upcoming trip. This popular app shows you the most relevant event ideas based upon your mood. Open up the app to find something unique and special to do that you didn't even know about.’

What It Does:

Gravy finds out what users would like to do by asking them to select from a list of pre-determined moods then suggests things to do depending on those moods. 

Now

App Store Description:

‘NOW is a living feed that merges Instagram and Vine to rank the most popular things happening now. It’s the first ever real-time aggregator that combines photos and videos to show you what’s happening through the eyes of the people experiencing it. The app is never the same twice, updating and changing every time you check it. Download it today and see what’s happening NOW.’

What It Does:

What Now does is pretty much clear from its app store description but just to clarify; Now is like a localised newsfeed that pulls information from social networks and tells you what’s going on around you at any given time. 

Ketchuppp

App Store Description:

‘Ketchuppp is the mobile app to improve your true social life: get notified when friends are near and choose a location to catch up - or as we call it: Ketchuppp!’

What It Does:

Ketchuppp keeps track of your social media accounts notifying you when one of your friends is near so you can connect with them to catch up bringing a non-digital aspect to your social life.

Banjo

App Store Description:

‘Banjo is your all-access pass to live events and breaking news around the world. We discover social posts from your favorite networks, sort them by location, and show you what it’s like to be anywhere in the world, right now.’

What It Does:

Banjo is like a social media newspaper; it searches through the social media networks and organises the posts by location so you know what’s going on anywhere in the world at any given point in time. 

Tinder

App Store Description:

‘Tinder is a fun way to connect with new and interesting people around you. Swipe right to Like or left to Pass on the people Tinder recommends. If someone likes you back, it’s a match! Chat with your matches and get to know them inside of Tinder.’

What It Does:

Not really needing an introduction Tinder is the premier dating app allowing users to connect with new people in and around their immediate location anywhere in the world.

& then of course we have the usual suspects that most definitely do not need an introduction. Although these apps would not really be considered direct competition, we’ve opted to include them as bubble offers certain functions that could be considered in direct competition.

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

This of course brings us to bubble.

So what sets bubble apart from the crowd? 

Think of bubble as your own little social genius, it literally learns from every action you take; from the activity on your social media accounts & your digital media players all the way through to the way you browse the web and carry yourself through the world. 

Bubble’s ability to accurately learn from you is profound, you could even say that bubble adds a human element to your digital social experience! In doing so Bubble effectively takes the guesswork out of finding something to do and lets you get out there and actually do it. In addition to pinpointing what you want, how you want, when you want bubble allows you to connect with new people that we’re sure you’d have blast with. 

Before you say people would never connect with a stranger, look at Tinder as well as Couchsurfing & Airbnb where people connect with and, with the latter 2, actually stay with strangers on a daily basis! 

Think about it, you’re travelling alone, in fact you’ve just arrived in New York and there’s something you really want to go and do; maybe there’s a DJ playing at a well-known club, or a little restaurant famous for that one dish you’re dying to try, wouldn’t it be better if you had a little company? This is where bubble comes in. Beyond this however bubble also offers people the chance to make money by creating and sharing their own tours of the areas they know best becoming makeshift tour guides. 

Say there’s a group of you in London and you need someone to show you around the city’s many and varied historical landmarks, wouldn’t it be better if you had someone who knew exactly where to go and how to get there? Wouldn’t you prefer to be shown around to make the most of your trip as opposed to spending 70% of the time trying to find your way through the chaos? 

Or maybe you’ve flown into Dubai for the first time on a shopping trip; wouldn’t it be great if you had someone who knew all the shops back to front effectively cutting your time trying to find your way around to zero? 

All you have to do is tell bubble what kind of tour you’re looking for and bubble will suggest the most relevant bubblemasters (what we call tour guides!) and allow you to connect with them. All you have to do is find the best bubblemaster for you, agree on a price and hey presto, you’ve got your own personal tour guide!

Last but not least, bubble is location sensitive, pulling up a newsfeed that’s specific to the location you’re in; if you’re in Sydney’s CBD you’ll get a newsfeed from the CBD, move down to Darling Harbour and you’ll notice the newsfeed has adapted to where you are. In fact if you were in Manhattan and decided to join a party at Space New York then, while you’re in the club, you’ll get a newsfeed specifically for Space! 

What this means?

Even when you’re looking at your device’s screen you’re still in the here and now. 

Maybe there’s a group of guys (or girls!) out on a stag (or hens!) and they’re asking people to come over and say hi. Or maybe you’re in Times Square and someone’s posted a video about an extra-special street performer you would have overlooked. The possibilities are endless.

This brings us to the most important question; why does the world need bubble?

Because bubble's not an event planner or guide; it's spontaneous, it's that friend you’ve got living abroad, the one that picks you up from the airport and has a hell of a trip planned out for you.

It's that connection to reality, bringing you back to the here and now to meet the people around you, giving you the chance to connect with your surroundings in a way that’s meaningful and fun. Bubble makes sure you’re always in the now, experiencing the beauty of what’s right in front of you, never missing a thing.

Who cares what George is doing in New York? Or what Mary is doing in Sydney? These are things you can do at home, on Skype or even over the phone. We want you to get out there and have the best mornings, afternoons & evenings of your life, because after all life’s an adventure, and pardon the expression, you have to grab it by the balls.